John Wright is the Director of the CSIRO Flagship Program ‘Energy Transformed’. The mission of the Program is to halve greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the Australian transport and stationary energy sectors by 2050. Dr Wright was Chief of CSIRO Energy Technology from 1994 to April 2002. In this role, he was also the coordinator of the CSIRO Energy Sector, responsible for the strategic development of all CSIRO’s energy portfolio and activities. Dr Wright serves on a range of energy-related committees and boards including: the Liaison and Implementation Committee of the International Partnership for the Hydrogen Economy, the Executive Committee of the IEA Hydrogen Implementing Agreement, the Australian Energy Alliance, the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum, the Energy Committee of the Warren Centre, the Newcastle University Faculty of Engineering Advisory Committee and the Board of the Centre for Low Emissions Technology. His professional affiliations include: Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy, the Australian Institute of Energy and the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is an Associate of Melbourne University and a conjoint Professor at Newcastle University.

Setting the scene: What is the hydrogen economy?
by Dr John Wright

Thank you, Michael, and good morning everybody. It is a great pleasure for me to be here to set the scene for what promises to be a fascinating series of talks today.

This is a topic that is sometimes very contentious. Jim Peacock said that there is a lot of cynicism out there on whether a 'Hydrogen Economy' will eventuate or not. It has its very fierce proponents, and equally its detractors. We will talk about all these issues today.

On the topic of the ‘Hydrogen Economy’ we are really talking about the future, and the long-term future. This is the vision that Michael Barber is referring to, and it is very difficult to predict just what the roadmap that will take us to a potential 'Hydrogen Economy' will be exactly. As Niels Bohr – one of the fathers of atomic structure, who first proposed a model for hydrogen as a single proton with an electron whizzing around it – said: 'prediction is not easy, especially the future'. This is what I think we are involved with here.

So, hydrogen, what is it? Well, it is number one on the periodic table. It is the simplest element in the universe, and the most abundant. It exists on earth in an elemental form as a divalent molecule, H₂, but of course it rarely exists in that form on earth. It is what I would call a very ‘social’ element: it likes to combine with other things, and on earth in particular it combines with oxygen to form water – obviously a very essential component in all our lives.

Hydrogen also powers the stars. It gives us light, heat and energy, and these are all essential elements of life itself. So you could say that hydrogen is a very important element indeed.

However, as an energy source or, I think, much more correctly an ‘energy carrier’, it certainly has some drawbacks. Its social nature means that for energy purposes we have to supply energy to break it out of its union with other compounds. Only then can we use it as an appropriate energy carrier, and then as an energy producer. We have to expend energy for this, and this is one of the main detracting points, I suppose, for people who will say: 'we will never see such an economy that is based purely on hydrogen'.

Hydrogen is highly flammable, as most good combustion fuels need to be,and it can be explosive in certain mixes. So you can see that hydrogen has quite a prickly character.

In addition to these qualities, hydrogen has a very low density and a very small molecular cross-section. So it is what we call a ‘fugitive’ gas. This means that hydrogen offers very, very deep scientific challenges to contain, store and deliver it cost-effectively, let alone making use of it.

Putting all these factors together, I think you could say that it is a gas with a particularly interesting ‘personality’.

Now, just getting back to the topic, the term ‘Hydrogen Economy’ has entered into the lexicon of energy-speak. We have to ask: 'why is this so?' We occasionally speak of the Coal-, Oil-, and Methane-Economy, but nowhere near to the same extent. None of them have the same ‘ring’ as the 'Hydrogen Economy'.

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Perhaps there are some clues in the history of hydrogen as to why this is so. I will just show a very cut-down, brief history of hydrogen and this might give us some clues.

The story starts way back in 1766, with the discovery of hydrogen by Henry Cavendish. Then there was a 73-year gap to the point when the first fuel cell effect was discovered. Shortly after this, William Grove discovered what he called the ‘gas battery’. Really, this was an inverse of electrolysis – a couple of platinum electrodes in a sulphuric acid/water mix, so that when hydrogen was passed over one of the electrodes, lo and behold, electricity was produced. So this process really became the start of the long march towards developing a commercial fuel cell.

After this, there was a long period of time before the next event (as can be seen on slide 2) which included the publishing of Jules Verne’s science fiction work - ‘The Mysterious Island’. In this book, the engineer of the submarine Nautilus, Cyrus Harding (and I think this is terrific) said:

'I believe that water will one day be employed as a fuel, that hydrogen and oxygen which constitute it, used singly or together, will furnish an inexhaustible source of heat and light of an intensity of which coal is not capable. Some day the coal rooms of steamers and the tenders of locomotives will, instead of coal, be stored with these two condensed phases, which will burn in furnaces with enormous calorific value.'

As Kirthi Roberts, from the University of British Columbia, noted: 'Little did Jules Verne know, that 130 years on - this prediction would still be science fiction.' Certainly, this is the situation we are in at the moment, although somewhat further advanced.

Over the next 60-year period, hydrogen was used for a variety of purposes, not least an application that took advantage of hydrogen’s low density by using it in airships. That is, until the Hindenburg disaster. Everybody is familiar with the Hindenburg disaster. We still see images of flaming airships going down. Travelling from Frankfurt, the Hindenburg arrived in Lakehurst, New Jersey, on May 6, 1937, during an electrical storm, and you know what happened. It was later put down to the flammability of the covering material, but it was obviously somewhat of a setback to the development of the 'Hydrogen Economy', and particularly in regard to the public’s concerns about safety in connection with this new fuel.

Nonetheless, R&D on the use of hydrogen energy continued, and in 1960 NASA successfully employed fuel cells, quite expensive ones, in their space program.

Then in 1970 the term ‘Hydrogen Economy’ was first coined by John Bockris, an electrochemist who was working in Australia at the time, and he has continued to promote it ever since. He defined the 'Hydrogen Economy' and updated it in 2002 so that:

'Boiled down to its minimalist description, the hydrogen economy means that hydrogen would be used to transport energy from renewables, at nuclear or solar sources, over larger distances, and to store it to supply the cities in large amounts.'

I think this statement probably needs to be updated again today with the advances that have occurred in research like clean fossil fuel technology. In this case we are looking to a technological add-on by which we might be producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, with no CO₂ emissions. However, that’s just one of the possible paths that this country might follow with respect to making use of hydrogen-, aside from solar-technologies. I don’t know about nuclear; we might discuss that later on.

Why was Bockris prompted to take this initiative? Interestingly, he started from the point of view of responding to the energy shocks of the 1970s and 1980s. He was looking for something that would be a cost-effective fuel because he predicted that the price of fossil fuels, for example, and oil in particular, was going to become much too expensive.

Since then, the main driver has largely been the promise that hydrogen offers in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, with oil prices currently at about $75 a barrel, we might be facing twin-drivers for the introduction of the 'Hydrogen Economy'. So the wheel turns. Certainly it usually turns for different reasons, but it is becoming more favourable to think very carefully about whether hydrogen is an appropriate part of our future energy mix, particularly in this country.

Returning to the historical time-line, in the 1970s things started to move more quickly, with the formation in 1977 of the International Energy Agency Hydrogen Implementing Agreement. There were 15 countries involved in that grouping. Australia was not one of them - I am sorry to say. However, Australia has since joined the IEA Hydrogen Implementing Agreement – last year. So, it took us a little while, but we finally got there.

Internationally, technical standards started to develop in the research area to meet strong needs. For instance, Ballard produced demonstrations of hydrogen fuel cells in buses. Shell set up a Hydrogen Division and in Iceland, because of their very high levels of geothermal and hydro electricity, a vision was put forward for this country to become the first with a 'Hydrogen Economy'.

In 2005, the International Partnership for the 'Hydrogen Economy' was set up which involved some 15 international countries. Australia was involved this time as a foundation member of the IPHE.

As a last little note for the time-line point of 2006, I thought I would mention that my own program, the Energy Transformed Flagship Program in CSIRO, is forming a ‘National Hydrogen Energy Materials Alliance’. This involves 11 universities and ANSTO, where we are going to commence a three-year program in which we draw together the skill base of universities. This is linked particularly closely with CSIRO as we work on aspects of the 'Hydrogen Economy'. It should be noted that two of the leading lights in that alliance, Andrew Dicks and Evan Gray, are going to be giving presentations later on in the Symposium.

Putting all these developments together, while there has been a scramble of activity in recent years, I think we still have a long way to go in order to reach Bockris’ vision. Developments have been slow, but of course this is the whole point of high quality R&D.

So, could the 'Hydrogen Economy' be the panacea for all our energy problems? You know, ‘The Hydrogen Economy’ is a catchy phrase, but ‘the will’, ‘the process to capture the benefits’, and ‘the ability to overcome the drawbacks of hydrogen’ – (in particular in its generation, transportation, storage and use) – are all difficult matters. Only time and excellent R&D will tell.

Yet there is vast international effort being injected into hydrogen research, on all aspects of this subject. The prize, I must say, looks more attractive as the oil prices begin to bite and as we move inexorably towards a more carbon-constrained world.

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The future might look something like this. This is a slide I pinched from an Italian hydrogen and fuel cell project, which tries to bring all this together. It combines production of hydrogen from fossil fuels – in this case gas, but it could equally well be from coal. It illustrates the capture of CO₂ and its sequestration for zero emissions, and also includes the use of hydrogen as an energy carrier. Also shown is a whole array of hydrogen generation systems that operate directly from sunlight, through the medium of electrolysis, through wind turbines, et cetera.

Now that forms a vision. I think it is something that we need to consider for the future, working out what the individual steps are that we need to take in moving towards such a future.

For this Symposium we have gathered together a highly distinguished group of national and international speakers. Each of those speakers will elaborate on the various aspects of hydrogen generation, distribution and storage, and use aspects, that together form the basic building blocks of the future hydrogen economy. I think it’s going to be a fascinating day, and I certainly look forward with great anticipation to what they have to say.

Thank you.

Jim Peacock – John, near the end of your Hydrogen History slide you mentioned the demonstration by Ballard of a production-ready system for use in transport. Has this had any impact, or was it economically not there? Just what has happened?

John Wright – That is being trialled around the world at the moment. We have hydrogen bus trials going on in 15 or 16 countries around the world. Right at the moment there are three hydrogen buses travelling around the streets of Perth. This is a big international effort, one of the recognised projects of IPHE, of which Australia is part, and it’s developing all that data for the possibility of having an urban transport system powered totally by hydrogen.

At the moment, in Australia we produce our hydrogen from oil refinery so you wouldn’t exactly call it ‘clean’ as far as climate change/CO₂ emissions are concerned. We in CSIRO, of course, have ambitions to put a renewable system in place in Perth to supply that hydrogen. But most of the bus trials around the world are being done with, if you like, non-renewable hydrogen. It is one of these first steps, one of these little baby steps you need, that you eventually need to move on from. Also, you can see that this could expand in time. As the transport system expands, you put fuelling stations further and further from the centre. You get a few people who only want to travel around the city, so they are catered for in that area. You might then start to put fuelling stations between large cities – between Sydney and Newcastle, for example – so that you start this process gradually. Thus the system will build, just like the existing network that we have at present.

Barbara Hardin, NGO from SA – I thought it might be interesting to say that I was in Japan at the World Expo in June last year, where they had actually set up a mini-grid where they produced biogas from all their wastes. They stripped the hydrogen out of the biogas and they used three sorts of fuel cells – molten carbonate, phosphoric acid and solid bauxite – and produced electricity which they used in their two pavilions, the Japanese and NEDO pavilions. I have got some information about it here, if anyone is interested. I thought that, on widening in a small way the opportunities to see a demonstration project, that is quite a good one.

Also, they used those buses over in Perth 18 months ago when we were over there at a fuel cell conference. So it’s all beginning to happen. Thank you.

John Wright – Yes, I visited that Japanese demonstration in Aichi, and it was a wonderful array of different technologies all lined up side-by-side. It was just a glimpse of the future.

Symposium program

Other speakers

Dr George Crabtree
The two hydrogen economies

Professor Cameron Kepert
Hydrogen storage in nanoporous materials

Dr Sukhvinder Badwal
Fuel cells

Professor Andrew Dicks
Advanced nanomaterials for fuel cells

Dr Evan Gray
Hydrogen storage: status and prospects

Dr Ben Hankamer
Solar powered H₂ production from H₂O using engineered green algal cells

Dr Catherine Grégoire Padró
Production of hydrogen

Professor David Trimm
Catalysis and syngas for the production of hydrogen

Dr Wes Stein
Making hydrogen from the Sun

Professor Harry Watson
Hydrogen car prospects